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Animal teachers

A whistling, whooshing sound sometimes punctuates our early mornings these days. It means the wildfowl population control people are doing their job, setting off sound bombs to scare nesting geese and ducks into abandoning their nests. It’s one of the…

Earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan. Floods in Australia. Battles in Libya. Rising food and fuel prices. The sobering news never ends. Our brief human history is rife with human and natural disasters. So how best to live? One of…

Yesterday I read a story about a real “bat out of hell”. The creature terrorized Patti Digh for three days before she could get it out of her house. She kept having to dive under an ironing board when it…

Catching Courage readers may remember a post I wrote about a crow trying to communicate with me about a dying friend (Compassion of crows). I included a link to a video about a kitten and crow, two orphans who became…

Tires crunched on the driveway leading to our ranch house. A red van drove up to the house and stopped. I came outside to greet the visitor. I recognized the man who emerged from the van. He was the father…

High temperatures. Hot winds. When they combine, as they did in Australia on February 7, 2009, whole forests of eucalyptus explode. As humans move further into bushland, they become witnesses and participants in a landscape where many cannot outrun the…

My daily walk starts along the small lagoon that lies between my condominium and a lakeside beach. Whatever the weather, the watery border brightens my day. At the very least, reflections dance on the water, but usually there are also…

[Regular Catching Courage readers will recognize Carol Mason’s name. She wrote about Jessica Mullins and sent photos of one of my favorite Australian birds, galahs. Be sure to click on the Brett Clifton link, which will introduce you to an…

Crossroads readers will know that Carol Mason is a new friend. Our introduction is a lovely triangle. I live in British Columbia, Canada. She lives in New South Wales, Australia. A mutual friend in Western Australia introduced us. In this…